If you live in Randwick City, you can use our interactive map to work if you live in Roosters or Souths territory (according to current NRL boundaries)

Both teams joined the NRL in 1908, but since that time the boundary between the sides has changed multiple times. Currently, the official boundary as defined by the NRL is generally Alison Road with the Roosters territory to the north and Rabbitohs to the south.

If you live in Randwick City, you can use our interactive map to work if you live in Roosters or Souths territory (according to current NRL boundaries)

Both teams joined the NRL in 1908, but since that time the boundary between the sides has changed multiple times. Currently, the official boundary as defined by the NRL is generally Alison Road with the Roosters territory to the north and Rabbitohs to the south.

The turf war is now settled – Rabbitohs banners are flying
at Coogee and Kensington and Roosters banners at Clovelly and Randwick. But some
Roosters and Rabbitohs fans are not happy. Mayor
Scott Nash explains how Council analysed the results.

“Roosters are not happy” screams the Southern Courier this week, “blokes at
work voted for Souths 27 times” says a Roosters’ supporter and “you didn’t have
to give any evidence of where you lived” says another.

This is the response to Randwick City
Council’s turf wars community consultation – and it seems everybody has
something to say.

The turf war is now settled – Rabbitohs banners are flying
at Coogee and Kensington and Roosters banners at Clovelly and Randwick. But some
Roosters and Rabbitohs fans are not happy. Mayor
Scott Nash explains how Council analysed the results.

“Roosters are not happy” screams the Southern Courier this week, “blokes at
work voted for Souths 27 times” says a Roosters’ supporter and “you didn’t have
to give any evidence of where you lived” says another.

This is the response to Randwick City
Council’s turf wars community consultation – and it seems everybody has
something to say.

I’ve even had emails from Souths supporters
asking why Rabbitohs banners are not flying in Clovelly given more people voted
Souths than Roosters.

Well, sometimes you’re damned if you do and
damned if you don’t!

But I owe it to the supporters of both teams,
our residents and all those that voted to give you the full story on how we
settled the turf wars once and for all.

So here goes…

In September 2014 Randwick City Council
embarked on its biggest and possibly most controversial community consultation
campaign ever.

The question was simple – where should we fly
Sydney Roosters banners and where should we fly South Sydney Rabbitohs banners?

The answer was a little more complex. In just
seven days, a staggering 5,000 people took part in an online survey, #turfwar
trended on Twitter, Russell Crowe called on Souths supporters to stand tall and
the communications machines of the Roosters and Rabbitohs cranked into full
gear.

Of the 5,000 responses, 73 per cent were from
Rabbitohs supporters, 22 per cent from Roosters supporters, and the remaining 5
per cent supported either both or neither teams.

But this wasn’t a popularity contest, nor was
it just about local residents.

Faced with this conundrum, staff at Randwick
City Council further analysed the results to determine the level of support
from the fans of each club for banners at each location.

While these results in general show strong
support from the supporters of both clubs, there was less support amongst fans
to fly their club banners outside the declared NRL boundary. Here are some numbers:

The official boundary between the Rabbitohs
and Roosters as declared by the NRL is Alison Road. Council’s street banners
poles in Coogee and Kensington are located in Rabbitohs territory and our
banner poles at Clovelly Beach and in Alison Park Randwick are in Roosters
territory.

We also have banner poles at Maroubra Beach,
Maroubra Junction, Kensington, Kingsford and Matraville where we fly Rabbitohs
banners – but these locations were never in question and are undisputed Souths
heartland.

You can see in the above table that while
both teams strongly claimed all four surveyed locations, there was less support
from the fan base for the locations outside of NRL boundaries.

As a consequence, given the ongoing support
from both Roosters and Rabbitohs supporters to fly banners in the traditional
areas, we decided to keep flying banners as follows:

Clovelly Beach: Roosters

Alison Park Randwick: Roosters

Coogee Beach: Rabbitohs

Maroubra Beach: Rabbitohs

Maroubra Junction: Rabbitohs

Matraville: Rabbitohs

Kensington: Rabbitohs

Kingsford: Rabbitohs

For the record, Randwick City Council is
proud to have two legendary football clubs in our local government area. We’re
proud of both clubs and will continue to support them.

I believe we’re possibly the only council
area in Australia to have two football clubs in the NRL! And both teams have
now made the final four in the 2014 NRL finals.

Whoever you support or don’t support, this
can only be good for our great City.